Anti-radiation domes to be readied in Ehime near power plant

Better than none, but how long do people have to stay in those temporary?

But even better would be to stop nuke.

Nobody can ever be fully protected when a nuclear reactor goes wrong, and expect it soon or later to go wrong, and most certainly in a country with many volcanos and earthquakes as Japan.

Nuclear safety is an oxymoron for the morons who believe it.

Clean air domes for evacuees to be introduced in Ikata, Ehime Prefecture, in the event of a nuclear disaster

IKATA, Ehime Prefecture–A nuclear power plant operator is readying folding domes here to provide shelter for up to 600 evacuees in the event of a nuclear accident.

Shikoku Electric Power Co. said Oct. 24 that it plans to install eight clean air domes at Ikata’s three evacuation centers west of the town’s nuclear power plant to protect residents from radiation.

The special shelters are expected to cost a total of 200 million yen ($1.76 million) and will be introduced by June next year.

It will be the first time for a power company to set up evacuation clean air domes in municipalities that are home to nuclear power plants, according to Shikoku Electric, although municipalities and other parties in Fukui Prefecture own such domes themselves.

The Ikata plant is situated at the root of the Sadamisaki Peninsula, which stretches east to west. Because 4,700 people live to the west of the plant, a big challenge is how to evacuate them when roads are blocked in a disaster.

In April, Shikoku Electric started considering introducing air domes to protect evacuees at temporary shelters in Ikata and began talks with Ehime Prefecture and Ikata town in late August to discuss the domes’ installation locations and total capacity as well as other topics.

The planned air domes will be made of polyester and measure 10 meters wide, 4 meters high, and 15 to 25 meters long. They will be equipped with air cleaning units that can remove more than 99 percent of radioactive materials such as cesium and iodine.

As evacuees are expected to stay in the domes for a week, they will also be furnished with toilets.

The domes can be folded into small sheets when stored, and four people can set one up in an hour, according to Shikoku Electric officials.

While three domes with a total capacity of 250 people will be introduced at the Seto Sogo gymnasium, three domes for 250 people and two domes for 100 people will also be deployed to the Misaki Sogo gymnasium and the gymnasium for Misaki elementary and junior high schools, respectively.

Those anti-radiation domes are to be set up inside the gymnasium buildings at the time of a nuclear crisis.

Maintenance and installation of the domes will be conducted by Shikoku Electric, whereas water, food and daily commodities for evacuees will be supplied by the town government.

Although the operations of the No. 2 reactor at the Ikata plant have been suspended, Koichi Tamagawa, an executive vice president of Shikoku Electric who is in charge of the Nuclear Power Division, on Oct. 24 reaffirmed the company’s intention to decide whether to restart the reactor by the end of this fiscal year.

1.This Month

The climate change threat to nuclear power

By Natalie Kopytko“…………The final problem is droughts, which climate models predict will become longer and larger. Legal battles have already been fought in the US over scarce water resources in regions with nuclear power plants, including the Catawba river basin in the Carolinas and the Apalachicola/Chattahoochee/Flint river basin in Georgia, Florida and Alabama. These battles show us that adapting our systems – including nuclear power – to a reduced supply of water will not be easy.

The International Atomic Energy Agency advises the nuclear industry to build power plants to last for 100 years. Given that climate models don’t agree on what to expect within this time period, it is not at all clear how this can be achieved.

New reactors could use dry or hybrid systems with lower water requirements, but the costs of running these systems are likely to be prohibitive. Considering nuclear power plants already have problems with construction cost overruns, any additional costs are likely to meet resistance.

What is to be done? Most forms of energy generation are vulnerable in some way to the effects of climate change, and the fact that nuclear power is among them is yet another argument against a wholesale shift towards this source of energy.